


a supernova grew up to be stardust

by myillusionsgone



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dæmons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials, F/M, Gen, Symbolism, also extensive focus on non-romantic relationships, because that is what we all deserve, more characters will be added when they appear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-06 23:44:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3152774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myillusionsgone/pseuds/myillusionsgone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's got lions in her heart, a fire in her soul. He's a got a beast in his belly that’s so hard to control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. now i'm the “low” in “lonely”

**Author's Note:**

> AN: I have read the His Dark Materials books a very long time ago and my knowledge is very rusty but I felt like dabbling into it because I adored the concept.  
> Also, this is a highly altered version of canon because I have more issues with the canon storyline than I have books and this is something that shocks me again and again.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, a lie is traitorous comfort – a safety blanket made of holes.

Ultear remembered her mother’s dæmon better than she remembered her own and this would have hurt if she had not chosen to give up Alexander long before before she had _supposedly_ joined the man who had been considered more worthy by her mother on his quest to unfreeze Deliora. She remembered Gwyneira, however, as the constant presence in her childhood, the large feline that had followed Ultear’s somewhat petite mother around like it was a shadow although they had shown to be capable of being far away from one another more than once – the last time when Gwyneira had not followed the cursed woman into the last battle.

(Gwyneira had been spared the sight of seeing her human die which was both cruelty and mercy.)

Ultear, too, could be far away from her dæmon.

In fact, she had not seen Alexander in a very long time – but this had different reasons. She could not afford to have the manifestation of her soul lurking around, following her – giving her away in the wrong moment. She did not even feel connected to her dæmon anymore, not since that day, not since she had been turned into a weapon – and weapons did not have souls, did not have weaknesses.

Her mother had followed a traditional ritual when she had been younger – probably the only traditional thing the woman had ever done – and as consequence, Gwyneira and Ur had been able to be separated without feeling any strain, any pull of their shared soul that had made it necessary for them to stay together all the time.

As far as Ultear remembered, her mother’s dæmon had always been groomed well and Ur had chosen to let the feline hunt on her own because it had been ‘more respectful’. At the time, Ultear had believed her. By now, she was no longer sure whether or not her mother – the word left a bitter taste in her mouth – had had a hidden agenda, had kept a secret from her own soul, something that should be impossible.

But they lived in a world where whatever they had called impossible a week ago was the reality they had to handle by now so maybe Ur had found a way to keep secrets from Gwyneira - not that the regal snow leopard would have ever let it slip if she had caught on.

Alexander had said that Gwyneira had been Ur’s sole confidant, more than once.

He had been observant and bright – and in another life, he would have been helpful to her while she had settled into her life at the council but Master Hades had told her that she could not bring him along and to keep the others from thinking, from realising that something was wrong with her soul, she had to make do with an illusion of an arctic fox. After all, people without dæmons were frowned upon because it meant that they were _soulless._ This was probably one of the reasons why hardly anyone underwent the rituals that permitted human and dæmon to travel independently from one another.

But Ultear was wasting too many thoughts on the past and the pain of the past.

The dæmons of the others on the island were odd and it was not quite easy for Ultear to discern why their soul had chosen the respective form. There was the wolf dæmon, Lykke, who did not quite represent the mortal she belonged to. Lykke was approachable on most days although it was obvious that she had arrived on Galuna Island with the agenda to keep her human out of trouble. And so she followed Lyon Vastia around like a shadow.

One of the very few memories of her childhood that Ultear had never given up on was the knowledge about her father’s dæmon; it had been a wolf as well. It was a sense of sick satisfaction she felt whenever she saw Lykke because she could not help but think that her mother would have regretted her choice to ever replace Ultear if she had gotten to see that the boy she had favoured over everyone else had a soul just like the man who had abandoned her.

(Karma was, as they said, a bitch.)

The purple-haired man – Yuuka Something – had a dæmon that had settled into the form of a buzzing hummingbird, into the form of an animal that was always everywhere, zooming through the air around her human’s head. The dæmon’s name was Samyra and Ultear had nearly snorted when she had first heard it because the bird was barely able to keep silent and so the name she had been given suited her well.

The second-in-command’s dæmon was named Alain and apparently, Alain had chosen the shape of a _**very**_ green snake. He was quiet and when he spoke, he spoke in hushed tones, making it quite obvious that he only spoke to the girl with the bright pink hair and that he considered everyone else to be not worthy enough to hear his words.

The last member’s dæmon was called Chloe and although she had not settled yet, she had an uncanny preference for dog forms and while she currently had a new form on each new day, Ultear just knew that dog boy’s dæmon would settle into a shape that would match her human’s. Only, the dæmon-less woman mused, that the droll canine would surely spice up things a little by turning green when she finally decided on a form for her.

(She would be wrong, there, but the thought still entertained her for a while.)

 

Gwyneira showed up three months after the dog boy’s dæmon settled into the form of a very pretty dog – Ultear did not really know what breed and it was not important to her either – and everything on Galuna Island changed drastically. It unsettled the one who was called Reitei because he, much like Ultear, knew this dæmon well – perhaps he had even seen what the feline could do while she hunted.

A part of Ultear absentmindedly wondered why on earth Gwyneira had not turned into Dust the same instance Ur had turned herself into ice but as it seemed, the woman’s claim of being eternally alive as the ice itself had proven to be correct because otherwise, Gwyneira would have faded out of existence a very long time go, would have been _freed_ a long time ago.

However, Gwyneira did not seem to be in the mood to talk to anyone. She lounged high up in a tree and stared darkly at all of them, swatted away every other dæmon or animal that got too close to her – and after her claws got dangerously close to the hummingbird dæmon the Wave Mage had, no other dæmon got too close.

Ultear could see that the pink-haired woman kept her snake dæmon hidden in her shirt ever after the day Samyra had nearly been injured by the silent cat and for a moment, the time witch was taken aback. Because Sherry should know that her dæmon was a weakness and by giving away how much she cared about the opheodrys, she made herself vulnerable.

But then, they all were just too happy to wear their hearts (their souls) on their sleeves. Even Lyon Vastia who was supposed to be their fearless leader always patted his dæmon’s head before he followed the one he had named his right hand into the temple which was a place where the dæmons did not like to go, certainly because of the pure evil their keen senses felt there. Only Alain who was just as unafraid (blind) as the mortal who carried him around on her person ever followed there. Even the dog dæmon – Chloe – did not follow her human into this place.

At first, Gwyneira’s presence had unsettled Ultear because there was the risk that the feline would expose her true identity but as weeks had passed and the oversized cat had not spoken a single word, this worry faded away. It did not seem like Ur’s dæmon wanted to stir up trouble for either of them.

The snow leopard seemed to be content with observing or so it seemed. She sat on her branch, nearly motionless and rarely ever moved a muscle while she waited for something to happen, for something so extraordinary that it would attract her attention.

In the end, Ultear got a little too close to the feline and from the corner of her eye, she saw movement before she was nearly knocked over by a very angry cat.

“Where is Alexander?” Gwyneira hissed, her voice rough from a long time of not being used at all. It did not truly surprise Ultear that the dæmon asked about Alexander. After all, it had been Gwyneira who had named the younger dæmon once he had come to exist, a long time ago.

Usually, Gwyneira and the dæmon of Ultear’s father should have named the newborn dæmon together but apparently, the male dæmon had been just as much out of the picture as Ultear’s father himself by the time of Alexander’s birth. Only that Gwyneira had handled it better than Ur, the whole _being-abandoned-by-someone-she-had-trusted_ -thing.

“Got rid of him; he was a liability,” Ultear said but those were not her words, these were words she had been taught, words she had heard so many times that in the end, she had started to believe it just because no one had ever spoken up against it.

The words failed to impress Gwyneira; she had always been equipped with a short fuse and apparently, years as an abnormality had not cured her from her swift temper – a temper that was a perfect replica of Ur’s, of the temper of the woman who was still in limbo.

 _“Foolish child,”_ she snapped and a part of Ultear wanted to reach out to swat the dæmon away but no matter how much she wanted to hate her mother, touching someone else’s taboo without previous consent was a taboo – and it was the sort of crime even she did not want to stain her hands with. Touching Gwyneira would mean to touch a remnant part of Ur’s soul and this would be just _wrong._

The feline’s tail swayed back and forth as if she was taunting the time witch and Ultear gritted her teeth and resisted the temptation, no matter how strong it was. “I’m no child,” she snapped instead as she stepped away from the oversized cat. “You should know this much, Gwyneira,” she added with venom in her voice because the cat was getting to her.

“I look at you and all I see is a little girl, throwing a temper tantrum, clinging to the blade that is cutting deeper and deeper into your flesh,” the leopard said drily as she jumped onto the tree again, staring down at Ultear with amber eyes. “Say, what form did Alex choose?” she then asked and the trap she had build was glaringly obvious, just like it was obvious that there was no escaping from a born hunter.

And in this scenario, the human was not the hunter.

Ultear did not know what form Alexander had settled into. She was not even sure if he had ever settled into something. Ever since the connection between them had been severed by the scientists (and on Master Hades  behest), she had not been able to feel him. But there was no way that Gwyneira knew this; the dæmon’s knowledge was limited.

(The feline liked to act like she knew everything but this was hardly true.)

But while she did not owe Gwen – Ur had always called the feline Gwen, never by the full name – an explanation for anything, she did owe Alexander at least this, at least this last shred of honesty because her dæmon had been betrayed, too, when the snow leopard had not come for him, just like Ur had not come for Ultear. “I do not know,” she admitted as she was, for the first time, happy about the mask that covered her face although she was nearly sure that Gwyneira could sense her frustration.

“You let them take him,” the snow leopard replied softly and yet, there was a bottomless sadness in her voice now, one that was laced with traces of bitter disappointment because she was, even after ten years, Ur’s dæmon, the manifestation of Ur’s soul and this required certain traits from her.

The ability of nearly unconditional forgiveness was one, the nearly unparalleled skill to understand even without having heard a proper explanation would be another although there was still a large amount of anger inside of Gwyneira.

“I had no choice,” Ultear said grimly as she wondered when exactly this statement had stopped feeling like a truth that served as an explanation and had started to feel like a cheap excuse. “You understand that, don’t you?”

Because the feline was a survivor and out of all the people and dæmons the time mage had met, this should be someone who would truly understand that sometimes, survival demanded someone to make difficult choices and that these choices did not necessarily mean that someone had never cared in the first place.

There was a scoff coming from the leopard as Gwyneira swatted away a mouse that had been foolish enough to get into the feline’s reach. “Oh, yes, I do understand but … poor Alexander,” she whispered under her breath as she shook her head before she huffed. “If dæmons would procreate, I’d blame Alexander’s tendency to be in the middle of the mess on – _**Pamphilos,”**_ she said with a dark tone in her voice while she watched the mouse flee, her instinct to hunt it down momentarily subdued, perhaps because the mention of the male dæmon still hurt her a little. “But sadly, I have to blame it on you.”

In another life, Ultear might have been offended but in this life, there was no reason for her to be because the stupid cat was merely speaking the truth. Alexander was a manifestation of Ultear’s soul which meant that even his less admirable quality of always getting into trouble was something that could only be blamed on Ultear because it was a shared trait.

It was the white dæmon’s sudden tension that tipped Ultear off that something was wrong, that there had been a shift – and not for the first time she mused that if it was truly wise to abandon the own dæmon when they all shared the skill set of the animals they settled into. As an animal of prey, a born hunter, Gwyneira picked up on the presence of others before they got into her sight and this was an amplified skill when the newcomer was a predator as well.

And it was another hunter who had chosen to arrive.

Lykke approached slowly, the green snake wrapped around the wolf’s neck, whispering something into the canine’s ear, certainly the same words of advice the second-in-command usually heard. The bond between Alain and Lykke was difficult to explain and Ultear sometimes had felt that the both dæmons kept just as many secrets as their respective humans (who had to be somewhere close) but right now, she did not really care about anything.

“Gwyneira,” Lykke hissed as she stared at the white dæmon with a ferocity that matched Lyon’s.

“Good that Ur didn’t have to see you settle for **this,”** the feline replied sharply as she jumped onto another tree, her own distaste for wolf dæmons seeping through, little by little. Of course, it was a given that canine dæmons rarely went along well with feline ones – which was why Ultear doubted that Ur had been surprised about the way everything had ended – but Gwyneira who had openly cared about a wolf dæmon once upon a time held particularly little love for his kind these days. It was a lingering resentment but there was little anyone could do about it.

“Not everyone is a loner by nature,” Alain declared from where he was located and Ultear made note that this was the first time in months she had heard the serpent’s voice this loud.

The cat hissed as she landed on all four, her teeth bared for a flash second. “I thought that you’d know better than to let Lyon associate with **snakes,”** she replied sharply, throwing a distasteful glare at the deep green serpent.

“You let Ur kill herself,” the wolf said darkly but calmly as she circled around, the snake bright green even in the weak light. “So I do not need to hear advise from _you,_ Gwyneira.”

“…I think I liked you more when you still were a fox most of the time,” the feline said harshly as she followed the example and circled around as well. “And I didn’t let her kill herself; if I had, I’d be gone as well. And since I’m still around, I’d say that she lives, still.”

“You’ve never been more deluded,” the wolf replied but Ultear knew that there was another thought in the wolf’s mind. Namely that the snow leopard was not alone with this assessment, with the belief that there was still a part of Ur that had survived Iced Shell, a part that had cheated death. It had never come up in conversation but with the way _Reitei_ sometimes pressed his palms against the ice as it he was searching for a trace of life amidst the cold, there were at least two people in the world who had not surrendered all hope yet, who were still thinking that there might be a little chance for a happy ending left.

(Ultear, for all her ideas of going back to the time before she had hated her mother, did not share this hope, this optimism.)

Gwyneira scoffed, her entire body tensing up for a shattered second. “Oh, and _**Zalty?”**_ she asked with a cat-smirk as she turned her head. “Alexander settled into a lion. Thought you might want to know this part. He’s part of your soul after all.”

The feline disappeared, a bright shadow in the night that turned quickly darker, and for a second, Ultear nearly acknowledged that she was lonely, very lonely. Her mother’s dæmon was still seeking for Ur’s presence – this was what had lured the feline to Galuna Island in the first place – and Ultear had surrendered the comfort Alexander had offered to her, once upon a time, for her desire of revenge. There had been something she had needed to do, something she had only be able to do without the manifestation of her soul following her around. If she wanted to complete the Arc of Time, if she wanted to go back in time to when she had not yet hated her mother for abandoning her, she had to play the perfect little pawn on the chessboard Master Hades believed to control.

(And pawns did not have the right to make demands, she had already been pushing her luck from the moment she had not let the master of Grimoire Heart cut Meredy’s dæmon away from her.)

But this was something she could never tell anyone, something she would never get to explain because there was no one who would listen to her. She was a liar and deceit was what she did best – and this was something other dæmons were just too aware of, sadly.

* * *

Ultear was not surprised at all when a long time later, Gray Fullbuster and his wary snow leopard dæmon Cinnamon along with a merry band of Fairy Tail mages made their appearance and wrecked havoc. She was surprised by neither their arrival nor the form Cinnamon had settled into; she was the mirror of Gray’s soul and since the brat had copied Ultear’s mother, it made sense for his dæmon to have copied Gwyneira.

A part of her craved for the right to fight him but it was too early and so she left Gray to his fellow student and could not help but smirk beneath the mask when she realised that the sense of family and mutual support Ur had tried to teach them had withered up and died a long time ago because while Ultear could not combat the memories because they did not die easily, she could destroy what her mother had tried to build within their hearts.

And it was not like her day was far away. She would fight Gray Fullbuster and maybe, she would finally understand why he had been considered to be worthy of the love and attention she had never received. She had tried to understand why Lyon Vastia had been worth it and she had failed because aside from a nearly creepy similarity to her mother in terms of personality, there had been nothing that had set this boy-turned-fighter apart from countless other starving children all over Fiore.

(From Ultear who had wanted a family as well, from the girl who had only ever wanted her mother’s love.)

(From the girl Ur had killed the day she had replaced her with someone else.)


	2. and it don't hurt like anything i've ever felt before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing changed at all?

 

 

Sitting on the roof of the destroyed guild building, Gray Fullbuster leaned back to watch the stars. It had been terrifying for him to see the orb of ice and the demon that had been enclosed in the ice. It had been frightening because he remembered the day on which Ur had left them just too well. It was a memory that had shaped him – after all, there was a reason why his dæmon had settled unusually early in his life.

Most people were at least fourteen when their dæmons found their permanent form. Gray had been eight when Cinnamon had stopped shifting, caught in the form of a snow leopard.

At first, the ice make mage had been angry at everything, especially fate because he did not deserve to be constantly reminded of the woman who had been his teacher and the regal feline that had been her dæmon.

But then, he had gone back to her hut to collect some things to remember his teacher by and Gwyneira had been still there, in horrible pain but still there and he had realised that although she was no longer in a human body, although she had sacrificed herself – Ur was still around.

It had not been something that had made him happy for long because torn between agonising pain and the knowledge that it was Gray’s fault that Ur was gone, Gwyeneira had been far from her usual self.

Absentmindedly, he rubbed his shoulder. The scar the dæmon had left in her rage had faded along the past ten years and there had been healers who had offered him to erase it completely but Gray had declined; this scar was the mark of his shame – of his failure as a student, as a son.

“She was right, I’d find you up here,” a familiar voice said as Charon landed next to him without causing much of a sound and he looked up, right at Cana who was standing in front of him. Sending a scolding look at Cinnamon – she should have warned him that someone was coming but then, Cana was a friend if not _**the**_ friend – he sighed deeply as he patted the spot next to him, waiting for the brunette to sit down.

“Charon,” the card mage said softly and the eagle lifted himself back up into the air before he landed on her head where her long hair was forming a bun that kept the dæmon’s talons away from her scalp. The hair style and the jacket she was wearing indicated that she had been out on an assignment and had been called back when Phantom Lord had attacked.

“Cana,” the eagle said as he sat atop of her head like he was some kind of very special crown. Gray remembered the conversations that had been everywhere in the guild when Cana’s dæmon had first settled. There had never been many mages in Fairy Tail who had dæmons who had settled into the form of birds and so she had been looked at oddly for a few days before people had gotten used to it. The conversations had picked back up when she had decided that Charon’s form meant that they should be able to travel independently from one another and that they should undergo the old ritual.

(Makarov had protested because she had been rather young, too, but ultimately, he had agreed to let her travel this far north under the condition that an older mage went with her. To everyone’s surprise, Laxus and his dæmon had agreed to take them up there.)

“Good to see you home,” Gray said as he reached into his coat’s pocket where he found a walnut he threw at the bird. “How was the quest?”

She scoffed and rolled her eyes before she leaned against what had once been the small tower atop of their roof. “Didn’t get to finish it; Master wanted me back here in case things go south,” she said and her voice indicated that she was agreeing with Makarov in this matter. Aside from Laxus (the asshole) no one of their generation had been in their guild longer than Cana and with Laxus off throwing another temper tantrum, she was needed.

“So this is really serious,” Gray muttered to himself. He had known this before as well but there was the fact that the master did not call back mages from their quests unless there was danger brewing. Of course, if Makarov had told Cana anything about any plans, she would say nothing about it. She was not the master’s right hand – this would be Mirajane – but the card mage was someone who kept secrets well. There had been idiots in the guild who had tried to get her drunk enough to spill the secrets she was keeping but it had been futile.

There was not enough alcohol in the world to get Cana Alberona to say something she did not want to say.

“Serious enough that he considers to call Laxus in,” the brunette woman said and her expression darkened. Out of all members in the guild (aside from the Raijinshuu), she had been the one who had known Laxus best as they had been in the guild before anyone else had joined. This meant that she knew him well, well enough to worry about the recent developments.

“You disapprove,” Gray said drily as he wondered when they had last gotten to just sit on the roof and talk about the guild and the future and everything else that mattered.

“How could I not?” she asked with a deep frown. “Look, he’s a good kid. I’m the last to deny this but … the Laxus we want and need is not the Laxus we can get these days.”

For someone as loyal as her, it had to be difficult to say this sort of thing but it was undoubtedly the truth. Laxus had changed and not for the better. Everyone had noticed this and frankly, the atmosphere in the guild was better with him absent.

Then, she shook her head as if to get rid of unbidden thoughts and reached up to pat Charon’s head before the eagle zoomed across the roof when he spotted a mouse. “I think, you know, that you’ve changed too,” she said quietly and something inside of Gray stung because he had been back for less than twenty-four hours and he had successfully snuck away from Lucy’s apartment and Cana was already on to him.

(Maybe it was a clairvoyant thing but then, he was not willed to bet on it because maybe it was just female intuition mixed with the fact that she knew him too well to be fooled.)

“…I went to get Sir Firepants and the newbie back when they went on an unauthorised S-class assignment,” he said as he remembered that she had not been there when he had left – if she had been, he would have dragged her along because her magic was as useful as it was diverse. “And um, let’s just say it hit a bit close to home.”

Cinnamon raised her head and looked at him in an accusing manner but quite obviously, she did not feel like talking about it either, not after she had fought Lykke, someone she had cared for like they were sisters. This event had made the always silent dæmon even calmer and Gray knew that she was a time bomb and that sooner or later, she would chew him out for having _considered_ to use Iced Shell.

“How ‘too close to home’ are we talking?” Cana asked as she shuffled her cards, keeping her eyes on her dæmon that was still hunting the mouse – or better said, toying with it.

“…Lyon,” Gray admitted and Cinnamon whined and he felt like the most horrible person because he should never have let fight Lykke, not when he could handle both Lyon and his dæmon had once. “Sorry, girl,” he added as he scratched the fur between her ears.

Cana let out a low whistle and Charon returned to her head before she started to speak. “I guess that explains why Macao said you weren’t the same,” she said softly as he wrapped an arm around him and rubbed his back with slow, circular movements. “That’s your brother, that’s – well, a direct hit to home.”

She was right, of course she was. All of Fairy Tail was his family but Lyon was different, was special because they had been taught by the same woman, by the woman they had both come to see as their mother was time had passed – even though neither of them had ever had the nerve to admit it out loud, even though Ur had died without knowing how much they had both cared about her.

(She had died thinking that she had been a tool to Gray and a goal to Lyon.)

The point was that out of all the people Gray had ever met, Ur had deserved better than this. She should have been one of the people who found actual happiness, not just some placating feeling of contentment. She should have gotten it all, the husband who loved her and brought the stars down from the heaven for her, the children who loved her and told her this.

Not some ungrateful little boy who yelled at her and told her that it would be her fault if he died after she had taught him so much more than anyone else. It had been years but Gray still wished that he would get the chance to tell her that he had not meant it, that he had been guided by his anger and not by anything even remotely rational.

(He had never let anger guide him ever again after that day, the consequences had been too dire.)

“…we saw a dæmon without a human on our way back,” Charon said as he gazed at Cinnamon from his position on top of his mage’s head while sympathy laced his voice. “It was the most interesting thing we saw in a long, long time.”

“Not now, Charon,” Cana said calmly as she briefly looked away from Gray and sighed deeply. “Look, I never had a brother. But – you’re like a brother and I tell you, fix this thing with Lyon. He may be a horrible person and a bastard but, you know, he’s family. And believe me, losing family because of pride … it’s…”

For Cana to run out of words was something that happened rarely and whenever it happened, it was because she had too many thoughts in her heart she could not get into an order where she could articulate them properly.

“You know, you give good advice, even without your cards,” Gray said as he closed his eyes again and wondered if it would be really this easy. What happened to Ur, horrible as it had been, was something they would have to talk about one day. They could try but there was no way they could run away from this for the rest of their lives. It had been Gray who had lured Ur to Brago and it had been Lyon who had forced her hand when he had attracted Deliora’s attention – but it had been Ur who had made the final decision.

This was the sole aspect of what had happened on that day no one could take the blame for because in the very end, it had been Ur’s choice to sacrifice herself the way she had. This choice was not on Lyon and it was not on Gray – their teacher had made the final call and it had left them to deal with the shattered remains of the home, of the family she had build for them over the time they had lived with her.

(Dying was the easy part, losing someone was harder – just like surviving always was.)

“I still could read the cards for you,” the woman said as her dæmon went back to the game of chasing after the mouse without actually killing it, “but first – Cinna, how do you feel?”

“Lykke scared me,” the feline said, not moving, not even moving a single muscle that did not have to be moved. “Never fought with a dæmon that angry before.”

It was something Gray could relate to because Lyon had been just as angry as his dæmon – if not even angrier, given that Lykke had always been a better listener than the white-haired mage. It had been an experience Gray could have done without, fighting Lyon to the point that they had nearly both died. Lyon and his wolf dæmon had been family and to fight family on this level was just wrong. This was why Cinnamon was so silent, this was why Gray kept rubbing the scar Gwyneira had left all these years ago – because right now, the world was completely wrong for them and there was no clear way of fixing what had been destroyed so casually.

Cana sighed as she spread out her cards and pressed her lips together. “I can’t tell you what to do but, Gray, there will be choices to make,” she said as she scratched her neck, “and I don’t need my cards to tell you this. Just – be careful.”

“When am I not?” the ice mage asked as his daemon finally moved again, shifting her position from being curled up by his side to being curled up on his chest. A part of him was happy about this; Cinnamon’s distance ever since her fight with Lyon’s counterpart had been worrying him.

“Whenever you get emotionally involved in something – which happens rarely but has _devastating_ consequences when it does happen,” she replied drily as she turned around one of the cards and begun to frown, mumbling softly under her breath.

Gray closed his eyes again and rested his hands atop of Cinnamon’s soft fur. It was risky for him to fall asleep atop of the building that had been attacked less than forty-eight hours before but Cana was there and she was good at waking people up within mere seconds.


	3. i'll be strong, i'll be wrong (oh, but life goes on)

**Characters** : Juvia Lockser, her dæmon

**Summary** : It has been them against the world all their lives and they are not willed to crash and burn just yet.

* * *

 

After all was over, Juvia did not move. Her face was still turned towards the sun because for the first time, she could feel its warmth, and she barely noticed how the weight of Marcellus on her chest faded slowly.  Any other person would have been surprised but Juvia had always known. She had known that her dæmon’s preferred form of a wild cat had not been his permanent one but merely one he had chosen so he could fight against other dæmons while she fought their mages.

“Juvia-chan,” he cried out and she reached out for him, her fingertips brushing over feathers rather than over fur. “Juvia-chan – I’m so sorry!”

But rather than to share his feeling of disappointment, she smiled faintly at the small bird dæmon. “So that’s it,” she whispered, her fingers tapping slowly against Marcellus’ beak, somewhat unused to the sudden lightness of his body. “You can fly now.”

They had been through a lot together and for the longest time, he had been her sole companion which had been rather tragic in her opinion because as he was the physical manifestation of her soul, he could not be far away from her anyway. He had been doomed to stay by her side, through each and every rainy day, because he had never had another option. He could not leave her alone.

“I can’t fight anymore though,” he argued and she rolled her eyes because while this was true, she was also strong enough to fight for two, to deal with another mage while warding off the other’s dæmon as well. After all, she was an S-class mage and while she had lost to the Ice mage, she was not suddenly weak. The loss was still bitter for her and she wondered if she would ever feel the same again – she had never been used to losing when it was important for her not to – but for now, she would try to figure out why she felt so much lighter now. The rain that had plagued her since her earliest childhood was gone and she felt immensely grateful towards the mage who had driven the rain away, hopefully forever.

“But you can fly,” she said as she finally looked at her lifelong companion. He had taken the form of a small brown bird, a nightingale.

“But what if it’s not enough, Juvia-chan?” he asked softly and this time, she reached out and opened up her hands, holding his trembling body tenderly.

“It’ll be enough,” she said softly, “Marcellus has always been more than enough for Juvia.”

It was sad enough that she did not have a friend aside from her dæmon (and sometimes Gajeel) but such was life and she had always been set on making the best out of whatever cruelty life had thrown at her, never wasting a chance that had been offered to her. And now, she had been given something great, a daemon that was a bird which meant that whether she could believe it yet or not, her soul was light enough to fly.

And to further diminish his worries, she smiled faintly at him as she cradled his tiny body to her heart. “Many great mages have small dæmons, remember?” she muttered as she picked herself off the ground and dusted off her coat before she lifted Marcellus up to look seriously at him. Yes, their old guild master had had a rather big dæmon but Juvia was sure that she did not want to have a coyote dæmon, mostly because large canine’s unsettled her for because many of the people working at the orphanage had had a dæmon of this kind and she had been afraid of them and their dæmons even though at this time, Marcellus had been able to easily shift into a form much bigger than them.

He had always been a good friend to her and he had never judged when she had felt like she had to pretend to be someone she would never truly be. He had understood her desire to fit in somewhere at least once but he had also always let her know that she did not have to act when it was just the two of them, mostly because there was no way she could lie to her own soul anyway.

“I remember,” Marcellus said as he nudged her gently as she walked away, her umbrella abandoned behind her because it would only be in the way of her carrying her daemon, silently thanking him because there was no way that she would ever have gotten to this turning point in her life without him.

“Juvia and Marcellus figure it all out,” she promised as she left the guild behind her, trying to ward off the traces of guilt that snuck up on her because Phantom Lord had dealt quite a bit of damage to the other guild. But feeling bad about this would have to wait; she had to find Gajeel so she could make sure he was alright.

After all, Juvia was not the only one who had lost her fight and she felt like checking up on her friend was a good idea. Especially since he would likely be hurt and she was perhaps the only person he tolerated in his presence when he was feeling bad about something.

“We lost our home,” the dæmon pointed out and the brave smile she had been putting up faded for a moment before he was right. No matter how bad Phantom Lord had been at times, it had been their home and losing it hurt her more than she would like it to.

“Yes,” she nodded as she let go of Marcellus, as she let him spread his wings and fly next to her for a few steps before he landed on her head, not quite used to the wings and the flight yet. But he would figure it out, the way he had always figured everything out. “Marcellus and Juvia no longer have a home. But Marcellus is still with Juvia and Juvia is still with Marcellus and – and this has to count for something.”

To her, it did matter. To her, it also mattered that Marcellus had finally settled although she did not want to think about the implications of him settling right after she had lost a fight for the first time in a very long time.


End file.
